Last night was the third and probably last time this 21-year-old Nashville songstress will grace the humble Windmill pub in Brixton with her charismatic yet down-to-earth presence. Not because the gig wasn’t a sell-out and an unqualified success, but because of the radio airplay and unanimous critical praise she has received for her debut album Own Side Now from everyone from the Daily Mail to the Independent. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if by this time next year she’s performing at the Union Chapel or even the Barbican.

It’s funny how things turn out. Of the four former members of Led Zeppelin, John Bonham is dead, John Paul Jones is an odd and unpredictable figure, popping up only occasionally with an album or a collaboration, while Jimmy Page is, according to Mick Wall’s definitive 2008 Led Zeppelin biography When Giants Walked the Earth, lost in a twilit world of his own creation.

The keyboard player usually associated with Paul Weller is "Merton" Mick Talbot, who, after leaving mod revival band The Merton Parkas, filled out The Jam’s sound in their twilight days and accompanied Weller’s journey through the Style Council. Andy Crofts of The Moons has made the journey in reverse: currently Weller’s live keyboard player, he also fronts and plays guitar with The Moons, a five-piece he formed in 2007.

Coming on stage in a gangsta bandana, wrap-around shades, and what looked like Saddam Hussein’s beard, Mr E was giving little away. There was no opening gambit, nor any indication of what direction the evening was going. Some had said the Scotland concerts hadn’t been so great. I heard one girl say that if Eels concerts had personalities they’d be as capricious as the fragile moods of the man simply known as E. But E stood there saying nothing.

The French have got serious form when it comes to twisting the determinedly uncool into something hip, a fact Phoenix illustrated so winningly last year with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, a beautifully crafted album of mid-tempo soft rock which lounged dreamily in some critic-proof holding area between the mid-Seventies and early Eighties.

“One afternoon back in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, I met four scientists in a bar, they were on their way to West Africa to study a parasitic worm that attacks the eyeballs of human beings and turns them into blind men.” And so begin the sleeve notes of C W Stoneking’s second album, Jungle Blues. Last night this teller of tall and fevered tales washed up in deepest Brixton, to perform to a motley crowd in the gloomy but brightly painted Windmill pub. It was an unlikely juxtaposition which nevertheless worked rather well.

If there's one festival in Britain where people are ready for the rain, it's the Green Man. After all, nobody goes to the Brecon Beacons to sunbathe, right? The weekend, which began the spate of boutique and specialist festivals that dominate the summer season now, remains one of the most spirited in the UK, and its crowd seems to be one of the hardiest even when, as this year, the deluge is near-continuous.

When Sarah Millican won the If.comedy newcomer award two years ago, it was with one of the most accomplished shows I had ever seen at the Fringe - by newbie or veteran - and now the South Shields stand-up has made critics reach for the superlatives again with another hour of superbly crafted comedy.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen an audience go quite as bonkers as this one.

Although The Arcade Fire are currently occupying column inches on the back of their new album The Suburbs, it’s fellow Montréal band The Besnard Lakes that are over here, playing dates on the back of their recent third album The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night. Both bands share a fondness for a full-on live assault that leaves audiences reeling.